A recurring theme in Europe’s tech world is that the region needs its own Google or Microsoft, and that in this day and age, to be more resilient and independent, it should, could and must build it. Now comes the launch of a new fund to support this initiative.
Project Europe — a new fund for founders “solving hard problems with technical solutions” — says it has initially pulled together $10 million from 128 different founders and tech execs from startups both in Europe and further afield. (The list, which you can view here, includes the founder of Klarna, Mistral and SoundCloud) Successful recipients will each get €200,000 (around $200,000) to build out their ideas.
Any companies that result from this investment need to be started in Europe, but there are no restrictions around moving them later. Founders also do not have to have fully formed startups to apply. You can apply with an idea or if you “have been tinkering around a thesis,” the fund notes on its site.
There is one other caveat. If you are over 25, stop reading now. Project Europe is limiting its awards to people who are only 25 and under.
One of the investors in the round explained the age-specific requirement as a way of “supporting the next generation of founders.” This focus on young founders is reminiscent of the Thiel Fellowship, which hands out $100,000 to college dropouts in the U.S. However, there’s no dropout clause in Project Europe’s case.
There has been extensive discussion about how Europe has failed to seize the opportunity to build a mega tech business comparable to Meta, Apple, or Google over the past few decades. In many ways, it’s a classic chicken-and-egg issue.
Some have pinpointed the lack of growth stage funding as a major bottleneck that drives founders to move to the U.S., or to sell up when the opportunity comes along.
Others see the problem the other way around. Ian Hogarth, the founder-turned-VC who has been one of the more outspoken people on the topic, has written about how the most promising companies are moving or selling too early. In other words, we’ll never know whether a lack of growth funding would have actually proven to be a bottleneck. (Hogarth is not among the list of people backing Project Europe.)
It’s most likely a combination of reasons why Europe has yet to produce a trillion-dollar technology company on the order of the hyperscalers that have come out of the U.S. and Asia. And it’s debatable that seed funding is a significant gating factor among those.
On the other hand, if Project Europe opens the field to a wider group of people who might not have otherwise had an opportunity, it will have achieved something in democratizing entrepreneurship. Early stage is a stage of spread-betting. If the proof may well be in which under-25s end up in these cohorts, it will also depend on what they go on to do as a result of the funding.
Project Europe says the initial investment will give it 6.66% of equity in the new idea/business if it’s leading the investment (less if not).
In addition to the money, cohorts get 1:1 mentorship from one of the nine partners in the fund — which include Victor Riparbelli from Synthesia, Mati Staniszewski from ElevenLabs, and Rina Onur Sirinoglu from Spyke Games (and the only female partner).
Other perks include access to the 119 others in the fund for advice. Harry Stebbings, the podcaster-turned-investor at 20VC who has built a business out of growth hacking and micro-investing, is one of the creators of Project Europe. He is offering access to his vast media empire as part of the deal, too.